theshadesofwords - Tumblr blog

[theshadesofwords]

“Before the war cut her life so sharply in two, she had cherished her possessions jealously. ... Now that she had discovered the important truth that her flesh was as brittle as theirs and far more precious, the safety of china cupids had become irrelevant.” ― Mollie Panter-Downes, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

[theshadesofwords]

“It’s tough to live with people stuck in the past, isn’t it?” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

[theshadesofwords]

Brattle Book Shop: An American Treasure

“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.” ― Agatha Christie, The Clocks

[theshadesofwords]

“The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.” ― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

[theshadesofwords]

A Lost Lady: The End of An Era

“He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairie, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story. This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for a rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed, - these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces, - and this would always be his.” ― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

[theshadesofwords]

When one needs a laugh, Bertie and Jeeves never every fail!

‘There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself “Do trousers matter?” ' 'The mood will pass, sir.’

[theshadesofwords]

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” ― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

[theshadesofwords]

“And when the coral spawn, all the other sea organisms follow. It’s like a trigger. The fisherman say it’s the moon that makes them spawn, she had said, and I said: How can they see the moon? They have no eyes. Perhaps they have other ways of seeing and knowing, she had. Perhaps we all do. There’s a grandeur in that.” - The Coral Thief, Rebecca Stott

[theshadesofwords]

“Query: Does incessant pressure of domestic cares vitiate capacity for human sympathy? Fear that it does, but find myself unable to attempt reformation in this direction at present.” ― E.M. Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady

[theshadesofwords]

Politics and palace intrigue add flair to this medieval murder mystery

[theshadesofwords]

“How much happier we should be,' she thought to herself sadly, 'if we never grew up!” ― Wilkie Collins, The Haunted Hotel

[theshadesofwords]

“Every novel is brand-new. It’s never been written before in the history of the world. At the same time, it’s merely the latest in a long line of narratives — not just novels, but narratives generally — since humans began telling stories to themselves and each other.” ― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World’s Favorite Literary Form

[theshadesofwords]

[theshadesofwords]

“It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have an intelligent interest in most things.” ― Charles Dickens, The Wreck of the Golden Mary

[theshadesofwords]

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” ― Arthur Miller, The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts

[theshadesofwords]

"Cranford" is a captivating BBC period drama that immerses viewers in the quaint and intricately woven lives of 19th-century English villagers, highlighting their social dynamics, romances, and challenges.

[theshadesofwords]

Why You Shouldn’t Watch Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince